Living With Hearing Loss
I come from a hearing-impaired line and I live with moderately severe hearing loss. My great-grandmother, born in 1870, didn’t hear anything past her mid-thirties and lived to be almost 100. Her son and granddaughter (my mother) reached a degree of deafness in their later years that precluded casual conversation. I had excellent hearing until my late 40s but it declined rapidly, and I was fitted with hearing aids at 56. Without those, I couldn’t do my work or enjoy much of a social life today.
I am not writing this in a “Poor Me” frame of mind, but to share observations that come to my mind daily. Hearing loss is complicated, often accompanied by a layer of guilt. Did I cause it through my own carelessness? I never went to a loud concert in my life… but I have mowed my lawn for years without ear protection. However, my mother’s family did neither of those things, come to think of it. Their house was cool, dark and eerily silent under the harsh Provençal sun.
Then there is low-level but constant negotiation going on in the mind of the hearing impaired. When you hear a muffled or nonsensical sentence, how hard and how long should you try to decipher it before asking for a repeat? How many repeats are you allowed? How often do you go for broke and pretend you understood the meaning from the speaker’s tone alone? It’s not all tragic, really, and there are funny moments. When listening becomes a conscious effort, one needs to take a little break now and then: I hear the start of a long story, so I “shut down” my auditory brain a moment and just smile. But then I have been known to “wake up” 10 minutes later, still smiling, without a clue of what was discussed after the story! Having everyone look at me, waiting for my answer at such moments, can be scary.
I am deeply grateful for modern hearing aids (and appalled that they aren’t available to all who need them). I was told that getting accustomed to hearing aids was an ordeal, but that hasn’t been my case. I look forward to new features when my current pair reaches obsolescence. Bone conduction headphones (a technology that is not primarily aimed at the hearing impaired, and not familiar to most hearing specialists) are a godsend for me when it comes to music, audiobooks and podcasts. The sound is beautifully rounded and your ears are still “open” to ambient conditions and traffic noises, which is essential for safety. As for the much-maligned Zoom, it has helped me stay in touch with my grown children in a way that wouldn’t work as well across an upholstered living room. I wish those features had been available to my elders, but I have the consolation to know that even better technology will be available to my children, should any of them be affected by hearing loss.
Oliver Hazan – VP of Sales and Marketing